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Thursday, November 20, 2008

As I mentioned previously, part of me wishes I was taking detailed notes, and journaling about this whole "writing a novel" process. Partially to look back on and see what I've learned, how I've grown. But I must also confess that there is a small percentage of me that sees that as marketable "wow" factor for when the book is a best-seller, and people are interviewing me about "the process".

I think often of my literary hero, Professor Tolkien. I have read numerous examples of this kind of thing, where Tolkien was writing to his son, Christopher, or his editor, Unwin, or a friend. He talks about how for a long time he was stalled when the Fellowship got to Moria, and he just had no idea what to do next. Or how Melkor (the Vala who was Sauron's master a looooong time before the third age) was originally named Melko. How/when/why did the name change?

I think of these kind of things as my novel already, in just the few short weeks, has gone through a metamorphosis and leaves me balancing on a precipice of "Oh! That's exciting, I wonder what that's all about." and "What the...? That's stupid! I hate this part, gotta change it later..."

In order to keep up with word count goals, I've been trying not to get hung up on thinking up good name choices (which includes a lot of research in linguistics in the 20 or so languages I'm looking at). I'm just quickly coming up with a "place-holder" name that I can go back and fix later. But the vast number of "place-holder" names is starting to overwhelm me. I can't even remember them from paragraph to paragraph, so I'm starting to keep a "continuity log" to keep track of all these weirdos.

Oh look! It's 11:42....gotta get up for work in a little over 6 hours, so I'm turning in. Got 6 hours of writing done today! 5,000 words!!! I can sleep well. =)